ANSA McAL Group CEO, An­tho­ny Sab­ga III said yes­ter­day that coun­tries in the re­gion, in­clud­ing T&T, should con­sid­er mak­ing their com­pa­nies and gov­ern­ments “hard tar­gets” for hack­ers, by pass­ing leg­is­la­tion out­law­ing the pay­ment of ran­soms for cy­ber­breach­es.

Sab­ga was re­spond­ing to a gen­er­al ques­tion about the group’s cy­ber de­fences at an in­vestors’ brief­ing fol­low­ing the re­lease of ANSA McAL’s fi­nan­cial re­sults for the pe­ri­od end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023.

Sab­ga said that in mak­ing life dif­fi­cult for the hack­ers, there were some op­por­tu­ni­ties that, as a re­gion and/or as a na­tion should be con­sid­ered.

“Were we to have na­tion­al leg­is­la­tion passed that it was il­le­gal for any com­pa­ny to pay a cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ran­som, that would per­me­ate very quick­ly in­to the world of these hack­ers. They would then re­alise the dif­fi­cul­ty of them get­ting a re­ward for the hacks,” said the ANSA McAL CEO.

He added that hack­ers did not con­duct da­ta breach­es for fun, but with the ex­pec­ta­tion of get­ting paid.

Out­law­ing the pay­ment of cy­ber ran­soms would help sub­stan­tial­ly, he said, but “it’s not go­ing to take away the risk and it is not go­ing to pre­vent the need to put in place the nec­es­sary se­cu­ri­ty and de­fences. It may turn hack­ers away to oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions where they may find more favourable hunt­ing grounds.”

On the is­sue of leg­is­la­tion, Sab­ga was asked whether leg­is­la­tion should be put in place to re­quire that the pub­lic be in­formed when com­pa­nies or gov­ern­ment de­part­ments have their da­ta de­fences breached.

He said while ANSA McAL’s skills and ca­pac­i­ties are in the sphere of of­fer­ing cus­tomers prod­ucts and ser­vices in ful­fil­ment of bet­ter choic­es for a bet­ter world, leg­is­la­tion is not some­thing the group has ex­per­tise in.

“I can say though that in oth­er parts of the world, there are very strong da­ta pro­tec­tion laws, which would in­struct what an or­gan­i­sa­tion like ours has al­ready done.

Com­ment­ing on the ro­bust­ness of the ANSA McAL group’s cy­ber de­fences, Sab­ga said: “Hav­ing had the un­for­tu­nate ben­e­fit of be­ing on the re­ceiv­ing end, and man­ag­ing, what could have been a very ma­te­r­i­al hack back in 2020, this group em­barked on a very sub­stan­tial cam­paign and ma­te­r­i­al in­vest­ment in Project Shield­sUp.”

He said ANSA McAL has made a sub­stan­tial in­vest­ment in cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty in­fra­struc­ture, over­sight, tech­nol­o­gy and train­ing to main­tain the group’s de­fences against hack­ers.

In the group’s unau­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ment for pe­ri­od from Jan­u­ary 1 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, ANSA McAL re­port­ed that its rev­enue in­creased by 9.62 per cent to $5.17 bil­lion, up from $4.71 bil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2022.

The group re­port­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of $323.78 mil­lion, a size­able jump from the $13.73 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od in 2022.